Govt Ties to Child Sex Trafficking: Special Report

More than 100 teenagers involved in sex trafficking and exploitation were rescued over the weekend in coordinated raids encompassing more than 70 cities, the FBI said Monday. The youngest child was 13 years old, the agency said.

The raids resulted in the arrest of 150 “pimps” involved in the commercial exploitation of both adults and children, said Ronald Hosko, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

It was the FBI’s largest action to date focusing on the recovery of sexually exploited children, and took law enforcement agencies to streets, motels, casinos and social media platforms, Hosko said. He said he hoped it would focus attention on sex trafficking, “this threat that robs us of our children.”

The pimps preyed in particular on troubled children, including children from broken homes, authorities said. In some of the cases, they used a popular online classified site, Backpage, to sell the children for sex, authorities said.